?? - Friends

I know some of my readers have been waiting anxiously for my write up on CK. I know I promised to write about it but one week after the incident, I just don’t feel like talking about it. It was a sad affair. I cried my balls out. On the day of the funeral, the band played some of those oldies song that we all love during schools and those are major tear jerkers. The song was chosen by CK’s wife. She said it’s his favourites: Beyond’s ???? (Hoi Foot Tin Hoong), Alan Tham’s ?? (Pang Yau, Friends) and as the last song, she dedicated “Yat Lou Soon Foong” (not sure who sang the song but it means “have a safe journey”)… wah lau… seriously, with those songs playing during a funeral, it’s hard not to cry.

Many of our school friends came – even those that we have not kept in touch for a long, long time. Loochoomus, Daniel, The Fly and myself went all 3 days. We are CK’s closest friends. WSL came for the wake and the funeral. She was our Form 6 friend and our badminton kakis. Daniel lit up a cigarette for CK and smoke “with him”, tears flowing down his cheek. This is one part of Daniel I didn’t get to see. I didn’t know he placed so much emphasis on friendship.

We are a close group. Every one of us have many years of histories together. I have known CK since Form 1. That’s almost 20 years of being friends.. studying together for 5 years and then playing badminton almost every week for the next 5-10 years. What’s more, we always hang out in his place for mah jong and chor dai dee during CNY. He was my remiser. I could still remember one of our outings where we played squash and he was pretty riled up when I boasted how good I was at squash. Even though he has no sneakers, he insisted of playing with me. I beat him flat and he had slight back injury because he wore his leather shoe. Back in KL, a girl took care of him because of his back ache. He thought that was really nice of her. They hooked up and he married her. I’d like to think that I indirectly match make them (

CK was not the first in our group to part from this world. Back in Form 6, our dear Kai Chai left us because of leukemia. He was a very smart lad. Even though he missed a lot of classes due to his condition, he was always one of the top students in our school. I remembered crying a lot during his funeral too. Then, there was Ayam Togel. He wasn’t very close because he was lan si. Nevertheles, he was also part of our class. Ayam Togel was with me since Standard 2 but I never like him. He was another intelligent fellow. Went to UM for Comp Sc, graduated and then worked in a big insurance company. Was diagnosed with brain tumour and his life went downhill since then. Heard that he has to wear diapers because he could not control his, um, discharge and people shunned him because of the smell. Poor guy.

Makes you think really hard about life, eh?

R.I.P CK, Kai Chai and Ayam Togel.
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